Modern business transactions commonly involve several corporate entities. In a typical transaction, each involved corporate entity may be owned by several shareholders, one or more of which may be another of the involved entities. The entities may also have different corporate structures, reporting requirements and applicable laws that should be appropriately dealt with during the transaction. In order to prepare transaction documents and execute procedures that address each of these concerns, entity representatives are often required to track and manage officers, documents and other specific characteristics associated with each entity.
Specific characteristics of corporate entities come into play even outside the context of a particular transaction. In this regard, corporate “housekeeping” required by laws applicable to a particular entity includes activities such as electing officers, complying with tax and regulatory filing deadlines, and holding board meetings. Again, these activities require tracking of a myriad of details for each corporate entity.
Recently, computer databases have been employed to track information associated with corporate entities. According to these systems, tax-related information is tracked and accessed by an accounting department, while corporate structure information is tracked and accessed by a corporate department. Oftentimes the systems employed by each department are incompatible, thereby inhibiting transfer of information among departments. Even if information associated with several corporate entities were available in a centrally-accessible data depository, current systems are unable to present the data in a manner that facilitates efficient tracking, editing and/or use thereof.
In view of the foregoing, what is needed are improvements in the management of information associated with corporate entities. Such improvements may in turn enable efficient management of the associated corporate entities.